Succession Planning
Succession planning should not be an academic exercise, it is a risk management tactic—essential for protecting business continuity.
Succession planning should go beyond finding one person to step into a job title; it’s about understanding the work of each role and ensuring the right person (or people) are prepared to take it on if and when the need arises. Then the job title can be filled with confidence knowing there will already be continuity in critical areas while the new leader takes over. Our proven approach ensures you retain critical knowledge, protect business continuity, and set new leaders and their teams up for success.
Beyond Planning:
When leadership transitions occur, we can onboard new leaders with a clear, actionable view of team responsibilities, critical talent, risks, and priorities, enabling faster alignment, smarter decision-making, and stronger engagement at every level. Shortcut the “listening tour” that is often the first step for any new leader by providing a quick look at the current state of their teams and a framework for direct, data-informed conversations.
Start with Strategy
Our Big Picture tool clearly articulates business strategy and clarifies priorities so that your succession plans focus on business continuity, not just the leadership pipeline.
Assess
Org charts and job descriptions do not tell you what your leaders are actually doing to a sufficient level of granularity to protect your competitive advantage during a leadership transition. Our Knowledge Silo Matrix deconstructs the full spectrum of work leaders are doing from budgeting, planning, and strategy, to uniquely specialized blocks of work like shaping investor confidence, navigating regulatory and board dynamics, forging strategic partnerships, crisis decision-making, and stewarding organizational culture. We’ll assign a mentee for every block of work, creating not only a comprehensive succession plan for business continuity but also a career development plan for your team.
Align
The Knowledge Silo Matrix helps you present your succession plan, priorities, and risks with key stakeholders. The data guides the conversation to prioritize action plans and mitigation efforts within a team and across whole divisions.
Take Action
We will work with your leaders to make sure their shortlist of successors each have a plan that clarifies expectations, details the work they may step into. But it doesn’t stop there. Our process not only develops the succession plan but it guides the eventual transition — whether it is in six weeks or six years reducing the ramp up time for leaders taking on new roles by 50% or more.
When leaders need to grow their potential successors, our targeted Knowledge Transfer Process breaks down tacit and technical expertise into actionable and transferable skills and tasks to measurably upskill talent.
Get in Touch
Keep in mind that succession planning should be done for all key talent, not just senior executives. Contact us today to discuss how we can help you with succession planning for your critical leaders and protect business continuity.
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Download our 4-Step Methodology to learn more about the work we do.